2020 Non-Presidential Elections 2

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Whoa. This is a brutal, but true, ad:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another sterling R candidate:

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Vile man’: Mother of viral meme star orders Rep. Steve King to stop using her son’s image in campaign ad"

Spoiler

The young, sandy-haired boy wears a self-satisfied expression. His small hand is clenched as if he is in the middle of a triumphant fist pump.

By now, Laney Griner is used to seeing the photo she took of her son in 2007 when he was 11 months old splashed across the Internet or featured in various advertisements. The child’s name is Sam, but for years the world has known him as the popular Internet meme, “Success Kid.”

Last week, Griner discovered her son’s copyrighted image in the last place she ever expected to find it: a campaign fundraising ad for Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). King has repeatedly come under fire for inflammatory remarks and rebuked as racist, anti-Semitic or insulting to minorities. The ad superimposes Sam’s famous face over a blurred picture of the U.S. Capitol alongside all-caps text that reads, “FUND OUR MEMES!!!”

“I was filled with rage. It made me so angry,” the 44-year-old mother from Jacksonville, Fla., told The Washington Post on Monday. “It was just kind of shocking.”

Griner, who identifies as “really liberal,” said she never gave permission to King or his staff to use Sam’s likeness, and is working with her legal team to make sure they don’t continue. On Monday, Griner’s attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that the congressman and his campaign take down the meme from all platforms associated with them and acknowledge the misuse in a public apology, among other requests.

Stephen Rothschild, a lawyer for Griner, told The Post that as of late Monday, he had not received a response. The letter demands action by Wednesday. Otherwise, it says, Griner will sue King, his campaign and a conservative fundraising site that featured the ad for copyright infringement and violating Sam’s “personality rights.” King and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

“I don’t want anyone thinking I was willing to accept any amount of money for them to use it,” Griner said. “There’s no amount of money I would take for that. … We stay away from negative attachments, and this is about as negative as you can get in my mind.”

Griner first learned of the ad Thursday. A reporter from Media Matters for America, the liberal media watchdog group, tweeted a photo of the campaign’s Facebook page, which regularly posts memes disparaging Democrats and touting conservative talking points. The image showed a post linking to King’s WinRed page and asking for donations “to make sure the memes keep flowing and the Lefties stay triggered.”

The mother took to social media to distance her family from the ad, slamming King as a “vile man” and the Republicans as a “disgusting party.” By late Monday, the ad was still on WinRed, but the Facebook post appeared to have been taken down.

“When you look at Steve King’s Facebook, it’s just one super offensive post after another,” Griner told The Post.

The last thing Griner said she wanted was for her son, now 13, to be associated with “anything negative and so vitriolic,” noting that the meme has largely been used in a positive context.

“It’s just the antithesis of what the meme’s reputation is,” she said.

“Success Kid” started as a funny picture of young Sam at the beach near his home in Jacksonville. Griner said she had just gotten a new camera and decided to take her son out for a seaside photo shoot. But as she snapped away, she realized Sam was more interested in stuffing sand in his mouth than posing.

The result? A photo of the boy staring straight into the camera, his lips pressed together with determination and a fistful of sand inches away from his face.

Shortly after Griner uploaded the picture to the photo-sharing website Flickr, the Internet went to work. The earliest attempts to meme Sam paired the child with the text, “I hate sand castles,” according to KnowYourMeme.com, a website that tracks viral Internet content. By 2011, Sam’s image was turned into what became its most popular form, dubbed “Success Kid” for its frequent use to describe “a situation that goes better than expected.”

Since Griner copyrighted the image in 2012, “stalwart American companies” such as Coca-Cola, General Mills and Microsoft have paid her to license it for advertisements, according to Monday’s letter. “Success Kid” was even used by President Barack Obama’s administration to promote immigration reform in 2013, after they obtained Griner’s permission.

“I’m a big supporter of Obama, so that was good for me,” she said.

In the letter, Griner’s attorney alleged that King and his staff “falsely implied by your unauthorized use that ‘Success Kid’ is somehow associated with and supports your campaign” and “misrepresented to the general public that you are acting on behalf of and even have some proprietary interest in ‘Success Kid.’ ”

“The majority of U.S. consumers reject your political and other views, often vehemently, as they have a right to do,” the letter said. “Those people may be repelled by any association with your politics and campaign and, therefore, unwilling to purchase products from legitimate licensees of the ‘Success Kid’ meme.”

Griner stressed that politics was “a big part” of why she was upset with the campaign’s use of her photo. But she “wouldn’t be totally against” other Republicans using it, she said.

“It’s really about the message and the person who’s using it, who’s letting it be part of their brand,” she said. “Steve King is just not someone who should be using it. Hard to imagine any mother would want their child to be associated with that.”

I wouldn't want my kid's image associated with King (R-Nazi) either.

[fraurosena]

Oops. Wrong thread.

Edited February 4, 2020 by fraurosena

[GreyhoundFan]

It's truly scary when someone makes Sessions sound relatively moderate and intelligent:

 

[Cartmann99]

16 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

It's truly scary when someone makes Sessions sound relatively moderate and intelligent:

 

I took a political sabbatical, but since early voting for the primaries starts Tuesday here in Texas, I'm now playing catch-up. Holy fuck on toast, Roy Moore is running again?!?

On that note, my representative in the U.S House, Mike 'Altar Call' Conaway, is retiring. That means we've got a whole gang of Republicans fighting over which one of them has the most guns is the 'True Conservative' that is endorsed by God and will get the "honor" of gestating Trump's babies.  

I've missed all of you. Please hold my hand and tell me we're going to be okay in November. I've accepted that whoever wins the Republican primary is going to be my new congresscritter this fall, but I'm scared that Trump's going to win the presidency again. I'm in Trump country, and he could roast and eat babies on the White House lawn, and the so-called pro-lifers here would still crawl over broken glass to go vote for him.

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

I took a political sabbatical, but since early voting for the primaries starts Tuesday here in Texas, I'm now playing catch-up. Holy fuck on toast, Roy Moore is running again?!?

On that note, my representative in the U.S House, Mike 'Altar Call' Conaway, is retiring. That means we've got a whole gang of Republicans fighting over which one of them has the most guns is the 'True Conservative' that is endorsed by God and will get the "honor" of gestating Trump's babies.  

I've missed all of you. Please hold my hand and tell me we're going to be okay in November. I've accepted that whoever wins the Republican primary is going to be my new congresscritter this fall, but I'm scared that Trump's going to win the presidency again. I'm in Trump country, and he could roast and eat babies on the White House lawn, and the so-called pro-lifers here would still crawl over broken glass to go vote for him.

 

Welcome back, @Cartmann99! Good to see your posts here again. 

Please take my extended hand, and let me assure you that Trump will be voted out of office come November. The blue tidal wave is coming. Keep the 2018 results in mind, and then factor in that presidential elections always garner more voters than any other election. 

You know I hate polls, but... if this makes you feel more hopeful about the future, then I'm gladly sharing it.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I took a political sabbatical, but since early voting for the primaries starts Tuesday here in Texas, I'm now playing catch-up. Holy fuck on toast, Roy Moore is running again?!?

On that note, my representative in the U.S House, Mike 'Altar Call' Conaway, is retiring. That means we've got a whole gang of Republicans fighting over which one of them has the most guns is the 'True Conservative' that is endorsed by God and will get the "honor" of gestating Trump's babies.  

I've missed all of you. Please hold my hand and tell me we're going to be okay in November. I've accepted that whoever wins the Republican primary is going to be my new congresscritter this fall, but I'm scared that Trump's going to win the presidency again. I'm in Trump country, and he could roast and eat babies on the White House lawn, and the so-called pro-lifers here would still crawl over broken glass to go vote for him.

Welcome back! We missed you! Isn't it unbelievable that Moore is running again? You would think that with all the crap that was uncovered, he would have hidden away for the rest of his slimy life.

If we all stick together, we'll be okay. We need to push to encourage every person possible to get out and vote blue, no matter who. Every election counts. Look at the good that is happening here in Virginia (I've posted about it in the State Houses thread). We finally wrested the state out of R hands for the first time in 25+ years and now real change is happening -- sensible gun laws, rolling back ridiculous abortion restrictions, finally ratifying the ERA, establishing LGBTQ protections, etc. The Rs are crying bitter and ugly tears. If we can do it here, we can do it on a larger, national, scale.

[Maggie Mae]

Does Kentucky have anyone running against Mitch? I find it surprising that people nationwide are campaigning and donating to Susan Collins opponents, but there hasn't been any sort of coordinated effort to deal with Moscow Mitch.

[ShesCrafty]

1 hour ago, Maggie Mae said:

Does Kentucky have anyone running against Mitch? I find it surprising that people nationwide are campaigning and donating to Susan Collins opponents, but there hasn't been any sort of coordinated effort to deal with Moscow Mitch.

Amy McGrath is the Democrat running against Moscow Mitch in November; however, the chances of Mitch losing are slim. Collins’ seat is a genuine toss up and her challenger has an good chance of winning. Better to focus time, energy, and money on seats Democrats have the best chance of winning. The other three senate toss ups that people should focus on are McSally in AZ, Gardiner in CO, and Tillis in NC. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an excellent video by the man running against Gaetz:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope he defeats Martha McSally:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Great news from KY:

 

[47of74]

Steve King (R-Nazi) has a primary challenger

Quote

 Congressman Steve King has a challenger, another Republican, in 2020.

State Senator Randy Feenstra is running for Iowa's 4th Congressional District which includes Chickasaw, Butler and Bremer counties.

In a statement, Feenstra said, "it's time we send a proven, effective conservative to represent us in Congress."

 

[fraurosena]

This half-wit conspiracy theorist wants you to vote for her.

 

[fraurosena]

Good news!

 

[Cartmann99]

Brandon Batch, who has been annoying the holy fuck out of me with his ads on Spotify, didn't do well in the Republican primary last night. Since Pfluger now has a majority of the votes in the primary for his race, and the Democratic candidate for TX-11 ran unopposed, it's going to be Pfluger vs. Jon Mark Hogg this November.

Quote

Name                           Votes                         Percentage

✓August Pfluger      55,802                       52.1%

Brandon Batch          16,117                        15.1%

Wesley W. Virdell       7,857                           7.3%

Jamie Berryhill           7,450                           7.0%

J. Ross Lacy                 4,767                            4.5%

J.D. Faircloth              4,207                            3.9%

Casey Gray                3,978                             3.7%

Robert Tucker          3,128                              2.9%

Ned Luscombe        2,063                              1.9%

Gene Barber            1,642                               1.5%

Those numbers are with 98.5% of the Republican votes counted.

https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/primary-election-results/

Quote

✓Jon Mark Hogg                     16,644                    100.0%

For those requesting a democratic ballot, 98.4% of the votes have been recorded. You don't register for parties here in Texas, you tell the poll worker what primary you want to vote in when you check in.

In other news, there was a gorgeous classic car in the parking lot that we thoroughly gawked at after voting.

[GreyhoundFan]

I so hope Jaime can beat Lindsey:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Bullock has agreed to run for Senate, which is hopeful. This is an interesting analysis of the Senate situation: "With Montana Gov. Steve Bullock in, Senate Democrats’ map gets easier, but ..."

Spoiler

Democrats are doing everything they can to put themselves in position to win back the U.S. Senate. It still might not be enough.

On Monday, term-limited Montana governor and former 2020 presidential candidate Steve Bullock announced that he’s running for Senate there, putting up Democrats’ strongest candidate to take this seat from Republicans. The same happened in Colorado recently when John Hickenlooper, that state’s former governor and presidential candidate, decided to run for Senate. Those are two well-known names who have the best chance of probably anyone in their party to win these Senate seats for Democrats.

Democrats are also making serious plays to unseat Republicans in Arizona, Maine, North Carolina and, to a lesser extent, Georgia. That’s a lot of opportunity for them to win back the majority for the first time since 2014.

But the challenge for Democrats comes from the fact they are coming at a deficit of around five seats and the tough races above aren’t guaranteed to provide them five victories. In fact, it’s more likely that they will lose at least one 2020 race, Alabama, than win the others on this list.

Let’s run through the math to explain how I get to the number five.

Today, without any elections, Democrats are four seats away from the majority.

Even though Democrats are at 47 seats to Republicans’ 53 — a deficit of three seats — the number is really four without the White House, since in a tie vote, the vice president can break it for his party.

So, they need to pick up four seats to win the majority.

But let’s make that five if Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) loses his first reelection in November. In case you need a refresher on why his loss is a distinct possibility: He won in a special election in 2017 against a very flawed candidate, Roy Moore, who was accused by more than half a dozen women of predatory behavior when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Now, Jones is running for reelection in one of the most pro-Trump states in the nation after having voted to convict the president in the impeachment trial. And after a primary last week, we know he’ll be running against one of two strong Republican candidates, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville or former senator Jeff Sessions, whose former seat Jones holds in the Senate.

Much less on the defensive for Democrats is Sen. Gary Peters, who is running for his first reelection in Michigan. It’s a state Democrats need to win to take the White House, meaning they’ll be putting a lot of resources there. So far, nonpartisan Senate watchers and some early polls favor Peters over Republican candidate John James.

That’s why election analysts and party strategists on both sides are considering a five-seat pickup the baseline for how the rest of the race for the majority will play out. Where else could they pick up five seats for the majority? (Or four if they win the White House and have a Democratic vice president to help them out in close votes?) Let’s look at the possibilities, which I’ve broken down into three categories:

Republican-held seats that are good opportunities for Democrats

1. Colorado: With Hickenlooper in the race, Democrats have a better-than-average chance to knock off Sen. Cory Gardner (R), who has watched the state he impressively won six years ago become more blue, while his supporters become more supportive of Trump. His decision to bridge that divide? Stick with Trump and hope it’s enough.

2. Arizona: Democratic candidate Mark Kelly is a former astronaut and a gun-control activist. (His wife is former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head.) He’s trying to unseat Sen. Martha McSally (R), who is in her position after having lost her Senate race in 2018, then getting appointed by the governor to the state’s other Senate seat after John McCain’s death. This election, technically a special one to continue to fill McCain’s seat, comes as Arizona could be tiptoeing toward being purple. It elected a Democratic senator in 2018 over McSally, and McCain, in his book published before he died, predicted that that could happen again this November. Kelly is also raising tens of millions of dollars, more than any other Senate candidate.

Republican-held seats that are true toss-ups

3. Maine: Can Democrats do something that has eluded them for decades and unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R)? They’ll have to win back the Senate. State House Speaker Sara Gideon is putting front and center the fact that Collins has been the swing vote in several high-profile fights (like Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and Trump’s impeachment trial) and ultimately decided in those cases to stick with Republicans and Trump.

4. North Carolina: Sen. Thom Tillis (R) is running for his first reelection in a swing state while embracing Trump. Democrats have nominated former state senator and Army veteran Cal Cunningham, a centrist Democrat. Like Gardner in Colorado, Tillis has struggled with how to please Trump supporters and Trump critics, doing a complete 180 on whether to support Trump taking military money to build his U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Republican-held seats that Democrats will need a strong November to win

5. Georgia: Both Georgia Senate seats are actually open this year, after Republican Johnny Isakson retired. Sen. David Perdue (R) is also running for his first reelection. Isakson’s new appointed replacement, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R), overall has a more difficult road ahead given how new she is. The higher-profile Democratic candidates are in the race to challenge Perdue. Rep. Douglas A. Collins is running for the Senate seat Loeffler holds, which could risk splitting the Republican vote in that state’s all-on-one-ballot primary.

6. Montana: Bullock is a big name in the state, having won statewide three times. But Trump won it by more than 20 points in 2016, which helps Sen. Steve Daines (R) feel more comfortable in his first Senate reelection.

Almost everything has to go Democrats’ way in the races above for them to take back the Senate. There’s little room for error. (If there are errors, they’ll need more Republican states like Iowa and Kansas to open up for them. In Kansas, could Republicans nominate a potentially weak candidate, former gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach? It’s something to watch for.)

But overall, Democrats’ path to the majority comes with a pretty big to-do list:

• They need to win in Colorado and Arizona.
• They probably need to unseat a 22-year incumbent in Maine.
• They have to win in one or both Southern states like North Carolina and Georgia.
• And they need to win the White House for extra reassurance.

It’s possible Democrats do some but not all of that and end up at least a few seats shy of the majority, for the fourth election in a row.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I thought this was interesting. I guess a grudge is still being held against Sessions: "Trump, in rebuke of his former attorney general, endorses Tommy Tuberville over Jeff Sessions in Senate primary"

Spoiler

After more than a year of bitterness between the president and his former attorney general, President Trump landed a heavy blow to Jeff Sessions’ pursuit of his old Senate seat in Alabama.

Trump endorsed his former ally’s rival, retired college football coach Tommy Tuberville, on Tuesday ahead of this month’s Republican primary runoff to see who will challenge Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) in November.

“Tommy was a terrific head football coach at Auburn University,” Trump tweeted Tuesday evening, nearly a week after the Republican primary in Alabama determined Sessions and Tuberville would be headed to a runoff. “He is a REAL LEADER who will never let MAGA/KAG, or our Country, down!”

Heavily implied in Trump’s tweet was another important constituency he believes Tuberville would not disappoint: the president himself.

“Coach Tommy Tuberville, a winner, has my Complete and Total Endorsement,” he added in another tweet.

Trump’s been attacking Sessions since the he recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sessions was a major adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016 and thus, he said, barred from investigating it by a Justice Department rule.

The decision roiled Trump, who felt betrayed by one of his earliest and staunchest backers. He publicly berated Sessions and ultimately forced him out of his Cabinet.

Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump in 2016. He helped legitimize Trump’s campaign early on, when few GOP politicians openly backed the party outsider. Trump once called him “someone I’m very proud to call a friend.”

Trump reportedly called Sessions a “dumb southerner” and mocked his regional drawl. Privately, the president reportedly called him “Mr. Magoo,” an old, bald cartoon character who obstinately refused to acknowledge his poor eyesight, among other shortcomings. Publicly, on Twitter, he called Sessions a “beleaguered attorney general,” who had taken “a VERY weak position” and “should be ashamed of himself.”

The president’s endorsement may be critically important in a state where Republican voters enthusiastically back Trump. Early Wednesday, Sessions resorted to reassuring voters that the Trump administration has his full support, even if he does not have the president’s backing.

“Even before he declared for the presidency, I fought for the principles that Donald Trump so effectively advocated in the campaign and has advanced as President,” Sessions said on Twitter Wednesday, defending his candidacy. “I believed in those principles then, I have always fought for them, and I will continue to do so.”

Despite the public barbs Trump has flung at Sessions, the former attorney general has refused to criticize the president, who won in Alabama by more than 27 percentage points in 2016. In his very first campaign commercial, Sessions played up his loyalty to the president in an ad one observer said was aimed at an “audience of one.”

“When I left President Trump’s Cabinet, did I write a tell-all book? No!” Sessions said in the campaign ad. “Did I go on CNN and attack the president? Nope! Have I said a cross word about our president? Not one time.”

Some Republicans had hoped Trump would stay out of the Alabama Senate race. Sessions has aimed take back the senate position from Jones, the Democrat who flipped the longtime GOP seat during a 2017 special election to replace Sessions.

Jones defeated former judge Roy Moore, the Republican candidate who was accused of sexually abusing teenage girls while working as district attorney in the 1970s.

But Trump’s disdain for Sessions opened him up to challenges from within the Republican Party. Several other candidates also opposed Sessions, but only Tuberville, the former Auburn coach, came out ahead of him. Tuberville netted 33.4 percent of the vote, followed by Sessions with 31.6 percent.

Now, with Tuberville and Sessions set to compete in a runoff, Trump’s endorsement could boost the former coach’s campaign.

“Looking forward to helping you drain the swamp and #KAG!” Tuberville tweeted in response to Trump, referring to the president’s 2020 campaign slogan, “Keep America Great.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A man sent anti-Muslim tweets to a Virginia congressional candidate, who responded by helping pay down his medical bills:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope Collins' opponent hammers this information into the head of every Maine resident:

 

[47of74]

Some good news out of Illinois.

Quote

In a major win for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, Marie Newman defeated Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski in Tuesday’s primary in Illinois, according to The Associated Press, toppling one of the last remaining opponents of abortion rights among House Democrats.

It was Newman’s second race against Lipinski in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District; she fell about 2,100 votes short of beating him in the 2018 primary. Lipinski then went on to easily win an eighth term that November.

This year, aided by a wave of high-profile endorsements that included Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and several progressive House members, Newman prevailed over Lipinski in the rematch by about 2,400 votes.

She’s well-positioned to win the general election, given the strong Democratic tilt of the district that comprises several suburbs to the south and southwest of Chicago.

Yeah we don't need any pretend Democrats hiding out among us anymore.

I am so glad ol Danny boy is gonna be out of a job come January.